Rare books from Alcuin Books, ABAA-ILAB

Paris; [1924): L'Editions D'Art. Limited Edition. 12mo. A limited edition of 1600 sets of the text. (100 copies on Japon) The present set is # 912 on pure white and Kleber wire rod. A unique set of this work in three volumes, 281, 205, and 264pp. with a preface by Albert Pauphilet. Each volume was illustrated in watercolor and pencil sketches by Georges Pavis (1886-1951), French painter, illustrator, and humorist containing his charming and erotically light-hearted illustrations to Ronsard's love poems originally published in 1584. This special set contains 30 original illustrations in rich watercolor and 30 matching original preliminary pencil sketches of the watercolor nudes, lovers, seductions, and other whimsical erotic endeavors, bound in at the rear. Each pencil drawing is presented on various lined or unlined papers. This set was originally issued without illustrations. These illustrations were added by Pavis as a personal undertaking to enhance this unique collection for his personal library,… Read More

London: Adam Islip, 1633. Thick Folio. Second edition and considered the best edition because of Johnson's expansion and extensive corrections. Johnson added over eight hundred new species and seven hundred new illustrations. Engraved title page, [38], 1630[1], [47]pp. [1pp. errata], as stated by ESTC-Dlr last line begins "sists".In three books. 1. The First Book contains grasses, bushes, reeds, corne, flags, and bulbous or onion-rooted plants. 2. The Second Book contains the description, place, time, names, nature, and vertues of all sorts of herbes, for meat, medicine, or sweet-smelling use. 3. The Third Book contains the description, place, time, names, nature, and vertues of trees, shrubs, busses, fruit-bearing plantes, rosins, gums, roses, heath, mosses, some Indian plants, and other rare plants not remembered in the proeme to the first booke. Also mushrooms, corall, ad their severall kindes. includes the Latin names of the plants and a table of the English names as are attributed to the herbes,… Read More

London; 1803-1806: Np. Folio. These reports were issued between 1715 and 1801 and were not inserted into the Journals. The reason they are so important for research is that before 1801 very few House papers were printed. Those that were printed were simply included in the Journals. The public demand increased after the Act of Union with Ireland. Charles Abbot, elected Speaker of the House in 1801, ordered the Clerk of the House to gather and list all the papers in his custody which became the Abbot Collection, this set fills in many gaps for the student of 18th Century Egnland. It is now commonly known as the "First Series". All volumes are bound in half red lether over red cloth, spines lettered in gilt, with occaisonal leaves with either browning or scattred foxing. Vol. 1. Miscellaneous subjects, 1715-1735 , viii, 707 pages, 26 pages, index. deals with the poor, smuggling, Tea, tobacco, pages 443-535 give details on the 1732 fire as Ashburnham House, the Cottonian Library with a listing… Read More

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1891. Limited Edition. Quarto. After Gray's death, the 23 plates were thought to have been lost but had been carelessly stored in his sprawling house. These surviving plates (total in all the few known complete copies) were expertly drawn by Isaac Sprague. They have survived as fine chromolithographic plates (2 folding). The Smithsonian then issued them in portfolio format in an edition of 300 copies. The plates as in all auction copies are numbered 1-4, 8, 10, 20, 25, 27, 30, 31, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 46-50, 52, 63. The orignal title page as well as an introduction by Samuel P. Langley, who was Secretary of the Smithsonian, were mounted and laid in. Our copy collates the same as the Smithsonian copy (other copies have images sometimes reversed, possibly due to a binder's error; a few on OCLC appear to be missing plates). The last copies to appear at auction were in the early 1990's and typically brought between $2,000 to $4,000 even with stated imperfections.… Read More

London, Canada, Nd(ca.1955): Privately Printed. First Edition. Octavo. An extraordinarily rare printing of perhaps 25 copies, 38, [7] pp. Privately printed by mimeograph by the author who, after suffering a horrible accident when a horse fell on him during a London Hunt and Country Club, retired from hunting and became devoted to fly fishing. After becoming the Chancellor of the University of Western Ontario, he fished the Restigouche and it is probably that river he refers to in The Fly Leaf. A much later edition was privately printed in London, Ontario, in June 1968, 30 pp., in a smaller format. Cronyn is quoted in Maclean's (June 1, 1968), discussing his plans to publish the 1968 pamphlet: "It's dreadfully boring," says Cronyn, "-except for the man who wants to learn to cast a fly." He has a few pages aimed at beginners and then moves into very detailed additional procedures and preparations with a precise chart on the issues of nylon, silk, weights, length, and torpedo level. This copy once… Read More

London: Macmillan and Co, 1927. Octavo. Half-title, Color frontispiece, 299(1)pp., (continous pagination) with 92 illustrations by John Tenniel including 8 in color. This was the book that made Lewis Carroll famous. Soon after writing Alice, he went on to write Through the Looking Glass which became another best seller. Alice (Liddell), was the little girl he wrote the story for. This is a beautiful copy bound by Riviere in full blue crushed morocco, elaboratly decorated in gilt, inlaid on the upper board is Alice and the Dodo bird, the lower board inlaid with Alice and the Queen., marbled paper doublures and endpapers signed by Riviere, all edges gilt, raised bands with compartments lettered and decorted in gilt, page 281 has a small marginal closed tear otherewise a fine, fresh and lovely copy housed within a lined cloth covered slipcase.

np/dated in colophon [March, 1540]: Christianus Egenolphus Excudebat. Folio. While this copy lacks the title page, and index (12 leaves), it does contain the entire text with approximately 320 hand-colored different herbs within the text. Theodor Dorsten was a physician and botanist, as well as a professor of medicine at the University of Marburg. Christian Egenolff was a major publisher of scientific books. While the scarcest copies of this work have the title page and index, they are generally found in the mid-5 figure price range. Here are all the 320 images with original hand coloring. Old repairs: page 1 with repair to corner, bottom edge, and along the gutter and one near illustration. The next two leaves with corners repaired. Verso of leaf #6 has small edge tear repair, verso of leaf #12 with repair to bottom margin and with a light damp stain, leaf #46 with repair to lower margin. No text had been compromised. Bound in two differently designed leather, upper board decorated in blind, lower… Read More

Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1939. First Collected Edition. Octavo. Limited to only 1268 copies of this early Lovecraft classic. 553pp. A very good copy of a work with nightmarish creatures with unequalled stories of the macabre that sweep beyond all barriers to those undiscovered lands out of space and time. When Lovecraft died in 1937, his friends August Derleth and Donald Wandrei began to assemble his known writings, stories, poems, essays and with its appearance brought the genius to a much wider public. The book quickly sold out and has become a cornerstone for the serious Lovecraft collector. Bound in black cloth, spine lettering gilt, corners lightly bumped, previous owner's name on front pastedown, C.F. Hunt, March 30, 1959. A very good copy without the rare dust jacket.

Edinburgh: for Archibald Constable and Co, 1814. Octavo. In 19 volumes. Frontispiecce of Swift in first volume which has off-set onto title page. Scattered foxing to title pages and to the musical scores in volume 19. Internally clean. The present work contains a hundred or more original letters, essays, and poems by Swift which have not published with his works. These have been recoered from various sources. Swift's son offered considerable help in providing information about his father. A collection of manuscripts of various descriptions were provided by their care taker Dr. Lyons. And, fourteen original lettrers from Swift never before published, two of which were addressed to Mr. Addison and the others to Mr. Tickell the poet. And, other unpublished pieces of Swift's work. Other published works by Swift were collated, corrected and enlarged. This set is from the library of Whitelaw Reid, with his bookplate, who ran as the Vice Presidential candidate with Benjamin Harrison. He was a U.S.… Read More

Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894. Quarto. 683 pages. Perhaps the most important and exhaustive treatment of the American Indian in the 19th Century. While the Dawes Act (1887) was originally designed to either keep the Indian on the reservations (or else be assimilated into what they thought characterized an American), this was the most notable governmental study of the 19th Century. This extraordinary volume has been fully collated and in the original calf binding in very nice condition. All 25 maps, 152 photographs black and white, 19 chromolithographs (all with tissue guards present), 34 illustrations are present. Each of the over 200 items are noted in our records. We have compared each page on Hathitrust with the UC Berkeley copy which lacks three photographs. The copies which have come to auction have all been rebound and those who have cataloged them have obviously not performed a serious collation. Bound in original calf, [Howes D-418; Taft, Robert Artists and Illustrators of the… Read More

New York: The Review of Reviews Co, 1911. Limited Edition. Quarto. Limited to 1000 sets. The present set is number 21. This set includes a two page letter from the publisher announcing volume I was completed and was being sent prepaid express to the recipient, George McKesson Brown, a pharmaceutical manufacturer of New York owner of the Coindre Hall Estate for he had built for he and his wife. This was a Before-Publication Sales letter dated June 12, 1911. The publisher made note that volume one simply covers the opening events of the war. He also states "This introductory matter is in many respects the least interesting of the work. But it will suggest how fascinating the other volumes are, especially on the Secret Service, on Hospitals, the Navy, the Cavalry, etc. The thousands of photographs cannot be described. You will have to see them"......."as no such collection of photographs exists on earth". A handsome set bound in full pebble grained morocco double ruled in gilt with corner flourishes,… Read More

New York; (1970): Grove Press. First Editions. Octavo. Limited to only 200 sets numbered and signed by the Nobel Prize winning author Samuel Beckett on the colophon of Waiting for Godot. The present set is #40. In 16 volumes which were published one year after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was an Irish author, critic, and playwright.The dominating influences on Beckett's thought was without a doubt the Italian poet Dante, and the French philosopher René Descartes. All books are bound in black cloth lettered gilt, spines lettered in gilt, spines are faded as usual, two volumes have some spotting on the fore-edges, internally clean and bright.

Venetiis; 1538-1541 William Snelling Hadaway (1872: Bernardino Stagnino (1483-1538) Printer. Small Octavo/151 x 103mm. Remarkable 8 uncommon volumes on Augustine's works on predestination and Pelagianism [primarily used in opposition to Luther's works] bound together as a sammelband. Most have been printed by Bernardino Stagnino (1483-1538). These volumes were once from the library of William Snelling Hadaway (1872-1941) who likely acquired them when he and his then wife left for Italy in 1894. His card is laid in. The rarity of these works is that most exist in less than two or three copies but based upon an examination in OCLC are not usually bound together. The six works of St. Augustine and two of Prosper Opusula relate to grace, free will and predestination. Stagino's full name was Bernardino Giolito de Ferrarei and he published in his career 193 editions calling himself a "libnorum mercator" (a businessman). Although he published nice books of devotion and literature before 1500, he later began… Read More

Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973. Limited Edition. Octavo. 189(2) pp. Limited to only 50 copies signed by Bukowski. The present copy is number 47 with an original painting by the author signed with tissue guard present. A collection of 27 hilarious stories which features two of Bukowski's finest and most famous short stories: All the Assholes in the World Plus Mine, an autobiographical rumination on the treatment of his hemorrhoids, and Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts. Hand bound by Earle Gray in 1/4 purple, gray and white cloth over light gray paper covered boards lettered in red, gray, and black, paper spine label lettered in black, red endpapers, a fine bright copy in clear mylar jacket. [Krumhansl 45a].

New York; (1983): Congdon & Weed. Frst Edition. Quarto. Approximately 300 unnumbered pages. The publisher pulped virtually all issues since it was to be issued in cloth instead of paper covered boards. A handful of copies got out before the printed copies were withdrawn and pulped. Gorey's brilliant drawings on PBS's Mystery illustrated his unique style. The stories include: The Utter Zoo -- The Blue Aspic -- The Epiplectic Bicycle -- The Sopping Thursday -- The Grand Passion -- Les Passementeries Horribles -- The Eclectic Abecedarium -- L'heure Bleue -- The Broken Spoke -- The Awdrey-Gore Legacy -- The Glorious Nosebleed -- The Loathsome Couple -- The Green Beads -- Les Urnes Utiles -- The Stupid Joke -- The Prune People -- The Tuning Fork. A near fine copy bound in pictorial paper covered boards in tan, black and white, pictorial spine, light rubbing spine ends and corners, in unclipped pictorial dust jacket showing some chipping along the edges.